Dragon Flight – Correspondence

I’ve chatted with several Oculus Staff. They have reaffirmed that my game is approved and that I can generate Keys to distribute to whomever I would like. They have also said encouraging things like:

we’d be happy to take a look at your next project!

I asked a bunch of questions about what I can do. If I can distribute my game for free. I’ve cited other games that… aren’t great, but are at least listed on the store page. I’ve asked if I fix this or that, if it would make a difference. Then I went to the analytics, and I was shocked. The time that they spent actually playing my game is pretty surprisingly low. Which means it was based on the first impression of about 5 people. So, tell me that. Tell me that they looked at my store artwork, and played for about 20 minutes, and didn’t really get how to play. I can address that. That’s not difficult to provide that much feedback. And then I realized the kicker:

The content review team decided that Dragon Flight did not meet the standards to be included in the Oculus Store.

As I mentioned, we’ve enabled Oculus Key generation on your submission so that you can distribute your content through the Oculus platform. Due to the volume of submissions, we can’t offer specific feedback at this time. To get an idea of the content standards required for the Oculus Store, please take a look at our publishing documentation, especially our Best Practices and Publishing Requirements. You can also look through the games and applications that we currently feature.

We’re always looking for great new apps and games, so we’d be happy to take a look at your next project!

Here is my response:

Jared Judd Today at 14:15
My analytics show me that 21 Oculus staff/people installed my game. 13 of them played for 30 minutes without loading a single level. (Are they doing their job?) None of the players loaded my favorite level (flying a dragon in between islands). Only 5 of the 21 content review team that installed my game accomplished the first step in the game (flying through a ring).

K – I get that there isn’t real specific data that you can provide, but I get the sense that my game was rejected(?) on a very limited first impression. Which to me says Store Artwork, and maybe the lack of a tutorial? (13 of 21 users internally didn’t load a level after 30 average minutes of game play?)

You get on the back of a dragon, and you fly through a big floating ring in the sky to load a level. There are 4 rings. 13 players played for an average of 30 minutes without making it through one of the rings.

I know my game needs more polish. Might need a tutorial. Might need new store artwork. I’m self conscious about parts of it. I understand that you can’t give me specific feedback. But I don’t understand the feedback of “we’d be happy to take a look at your next project!” You barely took a look at my first project, and you haven’t really told me what you thought about it. I didn’t even get an e-mail after the content review team finished. I reached out to you 3 days later to ask what the next steps were, and was told simply that I can generate keys to distribute my game.

Honestly. After submitting my game, I didn’t even get an e-mail.
Think about that.